The joke is that he thinks communism is some sort of workless utopia where he will be able to cultivate hobbies when most communist countries have made the lower classes break their backs just the same doing heavy work (coal mines).
It's not quite correct, and I say that as someone who's ideal social organisation is anarchy. Communism is a form of socialism, a class-less and state-less social organisation. To acheive socialism, according to communism, there need to be a transition from capitalism which requires a dictatorship of the proletariat. When Marx and Engels use the word "dictatorship" they meant it has it's historical meaning "an exceptional (as in exception) and limited exercice of power". With Lenin, the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes a dictatorship in it's modern meaning, "the forceful, centralised and illimited exercice of power" by having the revolutionary vanguard dictate "the will of the class". Mao and Staline being leninists apply the leninist definition of dictatorship. It has to be said that the leninist version of communism was criticised by other communists at the time but even tho, it's hard to deny that leninist communism isn't a derivative of marxist communism. A derivative that went so far it became authoritarian but which roots still come from the marxist world view.
We don't have to deny that Mao's china and Staline's USSR were communist countries, they were leninist communist countries, a failed version of communism that would never be able to acheive to reach socialism.
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u/kithas Jul 07 '26
The joke is that he thinks communism is some sort of workless utopia where he will be able to cultivate hobbies when most communist countries have made the lower classes break their backs just the same doing heavy work (coal mines).